The Noetic Revolution Toward an Integral Science of Matter, Mind and Spirit Selected Chapters David Paul Boaz (Dechen Wangdu) Draft 2011 ©2011 David Paul Boaz Copper Mountain Institute All rights reserved. [email protected] www.coppermount.org www.davidpaulboaz.org (505) 898-9592 Albuquerque, New Mexico Dedicated to Carol A. Hoy (Gendun Drolma) and to the ultimate happiness of all beings CONTENTS Introduction: The Emerging Noetic Revolution…………………………………………………………………1 I. Modernity and Its Discontents…………………………………………………………………………………4 Modernity: The Tyranny of Objectivity……………………………………………………………………4 The Postmodern Reformation………………………………………………………………………………8 Scientific Knowledge and Ontological Relativity: Bohr, Quine, Kuhn and Alan Wallace……………11 Quine’s Revolution: Epistemological Holism in Science and Philosophy……………………………15 Toward a Middle Way Between Modern Absolutism and Postmodern Nihilism……………………20 Bridge Building: Toward a New Paradigm for Science and Spirituality………………………………22 II. The Unified Quantum Vacuum and the Buddhist View of the Great Perfection………………………26 The Unified Quantum Vacuum: The Union of Science and Spirit?……………………………………26 Ontological Interdependence and the Quantum Vacuum: The Problem of Knowledge Revisited…30 Principia Dharmata: The Buddhist View of the Nature of Mind………………………………………33 A Glimpse of the Great Perfection…………………………………………………………………………44 A Brief History of the Dzogchen Transmission……………………………………………………………50 The End of the Great Search………………………………………………………………………………52 III. Space and Time From Pythagoras to Einstein………………………………………………………………55 Light Before Einstein………………………………………………………………………………………55 Special Relativity: Let There Be Light……………………………………………………………………58 IV. The Quantum Revolution……………………………………………………………………………………65 The Ultraviolet Catastrophe………………………………………………………………………………66 Being and Time: Newton, Heisenberg, Einstein and Dōgen……………………………………………67 Post-Quantum Logic: West Meets East…………………………………………………………………71 The Standard Model: Physics in Trouble…………………………………………………………………73 V. Toward a Post-Quantum Noetic Ontology……………………………………………………………………85 Being Here: The Perennial Mind-Body Problem and the Middle Way………………………………85 Cartesian Meditations: The “Hard Problem of Consciousness” and the Nature of Mind……………89 The Two Truths Are One Taste: The Prior Unity of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Metaphysics…94 The Secret of Human Happiness?………………………………………………………………………101 VI. The Structure of Noetic Revolutions: Reflections on Methodology…………………………………………102 Conclusion: Intimations of Immortality………………………………………………………………………………118 Postscript: Reflections on Quantum Emptiness, Ontological Interdependence, and Free Will …………………120 Causality and Ontological Interdependence……………………………………………………………120 A Rose is a Rose: The Paradox of Perception……………………………………………………………122 Choosing Reality: Quantum Emptiness, Happiness, and Free Will…………………………………123 Strange Interlude: Reduction, Paradox and Realization………………………………………………127 Toward a Secular Ethic of Compassion…………………………………………………………………129 Appendix A: Dzogchen, the Great Perfection: A Very Brief Outline…………………………………………131 Appendix B: The Idols of the Tribe: The Metaphysics of Modern Science……………………………………132 Appendix C: The Structures of Consciousness: A Review of the View………………………………………133 Appendix D: The Non-Meditation That Is Happiness Itself…………………………………………………135 Appendix E: Toward an Integral Ecology of Mind……………………………………………………………136 Appendix F: Being Here: Reflections on the Nature of Mind…………………………………………………137 Appendix G: Realizing Human Happiness: Toward a Noetic Science of Matter, Mind and Spirit…………138 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………142 Introduction The Emerging Noetic Revolution For no light matter is at stake. The question concerns the very way that human life is to be lived. —Plato (The Republic, Book I) On the cusp of the 3�ᵈ century CE two great scholar‑masters—Nagarjuna in the East and Plotinus in the West—began the noetic nondual knowledge revolution for our species that is just now re-emerging as the new Noetic Revolution of the 21�ᵗ century. (Nondual is subject/object unity, advaya/not two/not one; nondual wisdom is noēsis/noetic knowledge with no essential subject/object, matter/spirit separation.) All such societal and cultural knowledge relationships are necessarily subsumed and embraced by a vast interdependent matrix of relationship, an unbounded whole—by whatever name—that is nondual ultimate reality itself, the inherent basal source condition of all relative-conventional reality that arises therein. As the developmental dialectic of humanity’s emotional, spiritual and ethical evolution proceeds, and the ontological estrangement of the present Modern worldview of Scientific Materialism and the nihilism of its Postmodern reaction recedes, this incipient global noetic reformation in religion, science and culture has gently reintroduced to humankind an interior, integral and transpersonal knowledge paradigm, discoverable in part through the contemplative injunctions of the esoteric and nondual knowledge paths of our Premodern wisdom traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam); this all toward discovering or uncovering inherent meaning, even ultimate meaning in our lives. What is the meaning of life in this constant presence of our death? What are the causes of human happiness? Why do we refuse to be happy? What shall we do with this precious life we’ve been given? The big questions ask of our origin, our identity and our destiny. Such ultimate questions orient us toward the rediscovery and recovery of the ineffable mystery of both relative and ultimate meaning and happiness for one who considers them. We shall herein consider some of them. Some of our Premodern primordial wisdom traditions teach of the profound knowledge/wisdom dialectic of the Two Fundamental Truths—our two ways of being here— the social interobjective, and cultural intersubjective worlds of Relative Truth (samvriti satya/form) of arising finite conventional spacetime reality, and then the perfectly subjective Ultimate Truth (paramartha satya/), the infinite primordial nondual ultimate reality ground that transcends, yet embraces objective reality, and in which this all arises, descends and appears (involution). Our lives are an opportunity and a choice to return to this basal ground (evolution). Thus our human condition is this: we must live in and balance these two worlds—relative/objective and ultimate/subjective—at once! Thus, the perennial dilemma for science, spirituality and culture is the resolution of this invidious apparent duality, the relationship of our objective finite material existence—body and mind—to perfectly subjective all-embracing nondual Spirit, infinite ground in which everything arises and participates. Such is the “problem" of soteriology, the individual and thus collective challenge of human psycho-spiritual awakening/liberation/enlightenment (bodhi). I shall herein argue that the rigorous cognitive coupling of our objective and scientific understanding with the deep subjective realization of this momentous principle of the indivisible unity and coalescent dimensional interdependence of these two seemingly incommensurable paradigms—these perennial Two Truths—is the inherent treasure of mind, our heart’s desire, and both origin and aim of all of our happiness seeking strategies. To this purpose I shall enlist, however cursorily, for ultimate soteriological as well as polemical and pedagogical ends, the profound intertextual epistemological dialectics—both conceptual critical analysis and contemplative mindfulness practice—of the great centrist Buddhist middle way Prasangika Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti and Tsongkhapa, and their luminous predecessors, Longchen Rabjam (Longchenpa) and Ju Mipham. With this dialectal Buddhist Mahayana sutra foundation we will then glimpse the non- dialectical tantric view of the directly present immanent unity of objective material form (matter), and the ultimate perfectly subjective sphere of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. Thus shall we engage the inherently vexed perennial duality that is the Two Truths of objective form/and subjective emptiness/spirit, remembering all the while Buddhist nondual wisdom that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Knowing subject and perceived object, while appearing separate, are “always already” a prior ontological unity. We shall then briefly explore, to the same purpose, an important bit of 20th century intellectual history, namely, an urgent Postmodern “ontological relativity” as it arises in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory—QED/QCD—of the Standard Model of recent physics and cosmology. Following this is an examination of the logical and empirical possibility (or impossibility) of a physical “Theory of Everything.” It is here that I shall criticize the separative, destructive aspect of Modernist determinist mechanistic Scientific Materialism. We shall, in this connection, re-visit the Postmodern work of Bohr, Gödel, Quine, Derrida, Bell, Kuhn and a promising new post-Standard Model anti-realist physics from a philosophically recalcitrant Stephen Hawking. A robust, integral noetic science of matter, mind and spirit must utilize the phenomenological “doublet” of both objective third person exterior exoteric quantitative Science, and first person subjective interior esoteric qualitative spirit/value methodologies. Such a noetic approach is required if we are to guide our evolution—preconscious, conscious, and supraconscious—individually